Near the Bone by Christina Henry (ebook reader color screen txt) 📗

he was walking that way. It explained the horrible scream they’d heard earlier, when she thought (hoped, you hoped with all of your heart) that William was dying.

They hurried as best they could, Jen stumbling frequently, C.P. dragging her along when he had to. Mattie darted ahead and then back again, biting her lip, her throat burning with sick acid bubbling up from her churning stomach.

Hurry, hurry, she thought.

For no matter how fast they moved, she heard the inexorable thunk-drag-thunk-drag-thunk-drag behind them.

They weren’t even trying to be silent now. All three of them knew that William was following their tracks in the snow, and the only thing that mattered was reaching the cabin before he did, so that they could bolt the door against him.

Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Mattie thought she heard William approaching faster, thought she felt his hands reaching out to grab her braid, pull her down into the snow, his fists pounding into her body, his lips saying, A man’s got to have sons, Martha, and you’re the one to give them to me.

But no, he wasn’t there, he wasn’t dragging her away, he was still behind them, not close enough to see and they could still escape, they could still reach the cabin before he did.

Thunk-drag-thunk-drag-thunk-drag-thunk-drag.

Where was the cabin? She didn’t think they were that far away from it. For a moment Mattie worried that she’d gotten turned around in the dark, that they weren’t on the path to the cabin at all.

Then the clearing was before them, and the little cluster of buildings that had been her home for the last twelve years.

No, she thought as she ran for the cabin door. It has never been a home. A home is a place where there is warmth and love and safety, and I have never had those things here.

Mattie heard Jen and C.P. limping along several feet behind her, and beyond them the sound of William approaching.

Thunk-drag-thunk-drag-thunk-drag.

The cabin could only be locked from inside, not without, so Mattie knew that William could not bar it against her if he wasn’t home. Her boots clattered over the porch and she threw the cabin door open.

Inside it was cold and dark, the fire that she’d carefully tended earlier down to only a few embers.

“Hurry,” she croaked at Jen and C.P. as she stood at the door, ready to slam it shut the moment they were inside. All the world seemed to be inside the frame of the door—the bit of clearing, Jen and C.P. seeming to grow larger and larger as they approached, the watchful trees beyond.

Thunk-drag-thunk-drag-thunk-drag.

He was closer. He would be upon them in a moment.

Jen banged her leg into the bottom step that led up to the platform of the porch and cried out. C.P. half-lifted Jen over the wooden lip of the porch and shoved her in the direction of the door. Jen stumbled through, past Mattie, and collapsed on the floor just as C.P. hurried in behind.

Mattie slammed the door shut and threw the bolt home. Her heart was hammering so hard that she felt sick.

I did it. I beat him. I locked him out in the night just like he did to me.

Her hands shook and her teeth chattered and part of her brain was in panicked overdrive, shouting at her, Open the door you’re not supposed to do that he’s going to hurt you so much when he gets inside you need to make him happy or he’ll hurt you more oh god what have you done?

Even through the locked door she heard him coming for her.

Thunk-drag-thunk-drag-thunk-drag.

The windows. Could he get through the windows? No, William was a big man and the windows were small. They should try to block them, though. They shouldn’t give him any path inside.

“Windows,” Mattie said through her chattering teeth. “We . . . need . . . to . . . block . . . them.”

“With what?” C.P. said. “I can’t see anything in here.”

Mattie pulled the flashlight out of her pocket. She didn’t know how to turn it on. It had been years since she’d touched a flashlight and all she could think about was William: William following their trail through the snow, William stalking through the clearing, William’s footsteps going thunk-drag-thunk-drag-thunk-drag across the porch, William’s fists pounding on the door.

Mattie’s mittened hands slid over the plastic light, panicked and unsure, but somehow she accidentally managed to click it on. Jen and C.P. appeared in the pool of light. Jen lay on her back, out of breath, her eyes streaming. C.P. knelt on the floor beside her, his head bowed, his hand held up to block the light.

“Turn it away!” he said. “If you want stuff to block the windows then point it at that stuff.”

The trouble was that Mattie couldn’t think of what they might use. All the chairs were heavy, handmade by William and difficult to move. They’d have to stack the chairs to get high enough to cover the glass. What they really needed were boards or something like them, but there was nothing like that in the cabin.

Mattie darted the flashlight all around the cabin—at the table where she’d eaten her cheese and bread earlier in the day, at the couch that hid the roll of money she’d stolen from William, at the leftover pile of supplies he’d purchased for “fighting a demon.”

Thunk-drag-thunk-drag-thunk-drag.

Even through the walls of the cabin she heard the inexorable steps, the sound that meant William was nearly there.

“At least let’s block the door,” C.P. said. He grabbed one of the heavy chairs away from the table and dragged it toward the front door, forcing Jen to roll away or else she’d be run over by the chair and his tramping feet.

Mattie followed his progress with the flashlight, watched him push the back of the chair up against the door and then sit in it, adding his weight to block the door. Sweat glistened on his cheeks and forehead.

“There,” C.P. said. “He can’t possibly get through this.”

Thunk-drag-thunk-drag-thunk-drag came William’s boots across the porch.

Mattie’s hand shook as she pointed the flashlight at